Asus has announced a new special edition version of the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, to celebrate 20 years of the Republic of Gamers brand. The Xbox Ally X20 comes with a new, slightly larger OLED display, a special translucent chassis, a gold internal structure, and comes bundled with the ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20 Gaming AR glasses. While it may look a lot like an Xbox Ally X with a teardown skin, don’t be fooled, as this new edition packs a major punch.
Announced just days after Valve’s unprecedented Steam Deck price rise, the Ally X20 boasts a new OLED panel, with the Nebula HDR display enlarged to 7.4 inches from the 7-inch display found on the original Xbox Ally X. According to Asus, the display features a 120Hz refresh rate, FreeSync Premium Pro support, and 1,400 nits of peak brightness. Because of the new OLED panels, Asus also redesigned the cooling solution on the Ally X20 to ensure the heat-sensitive display won’t be affected by thermal damage.
It’s not just the new display that is beautiful to look at, either, as the gaming handheld comes with a gorgeous translucent black chassis, allowing you to see inside the device. Because of this, the internal structure now has gold accents, giving it an intricate and intriguing look.
The Xbox Ally X20 also comes with new TMR joystick technology designed to combat stick drift, which Asus says delivers “pinpoint precision, smoother tracking, and longer-lasting performance.” Directional inputs have also had some attention, with a Transforming D-Pad inspired by Xbox controllers allowing players to convert between four-way and eight-way movement. Face buttons have also been altered, with Asus stating that they now “sit flush against the chassis” to make sliding your thumb from one to another much smoother. In the images of the device, however, they don’t appear to be sitting flush. How that feels will also be interesting, as I imagine that it may be easy to hit the wrong button if you’re sliding your thumb over them as smoothly as they suggest. We’ll have to wait until we get it in our hands to test that out.
Inside, the Ally X20 comes with the same AMD Ryzen AI Z2 processor and 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM as the original unit. It has plenty of room for games too, thanks to 1TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe storage.
It’s not only the handheld you’re getting with this bundle, as the Ally X20 comes with the ROG XREAL R1 Edition 20 Gaming AR glasses, which Asus says “steps up gaming immersion” thanks to their 171-inch virtual screen size, 240Hz refresh rate, and 0.01ms response time. The glasses connect to the handheld through USB Type-C, and their design matches the black and gold of the console.
At the time of writing, we don’t have a release date or price for the Xbox Ally X20 bundle, but you can expect it to sit above the current $999 asking price of its predecessor. The price of PC gaming is high at the moment, too, with graphics cards and RAM both soaring in price as AI data centers snap them up. With both the handheld and the AR glasses included in the bundle, expect to see a hefty price tag. We’ll keep you updated when we learn more.
